


Halo Effect

by JeannetteRankin



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Ableist Language, Canon Compliant, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Law School, Long-Suffering Foggy, Minor Violence, Pre-Series, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeannetteRankin/pseuds/JeannetteRankin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“If there's a stunning woman of questionable character in the room, Matt Murdock's gonna find her, and Foggy Nelson is gonna suffer.” -Daredevil, s1e01</i>
</p><p>It's not that Foggy resents Matt's success with women. But why does it always seem to send his day straight to hell every time Matt meets a beautiful girl?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sexile

**Author's Note:**

> Whooooo wants a cute fluffy 5+1 of Matt meeting hot weirdos, and Foggy suffering for it??? ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Foggy had insisted on negotiating a sexile agreement during their first week of living together, for the stated reason that he was going to be bringing back a ton of hotties and they should really get it sorted out ahead of time. Said hotties had not yet materialized for Foggy—though there was a blonde girl in Torts that was totally into him, it was only a matter of time—but he was a fair-minded guy, so when he came home to a sticky note on the door embossed with a braille “NOPE” (he'd memorized that letter combination as part of the agreement) on a Friday night six weeks into their living together, he grumbled a bit, but went and crashed in Kent's room.

He and Kent mutually agreed that Matt had unfair advantages when it came to the ladies. “What can you do? Some guys are just born lucky,” Kent remarked phlegmatically.

“Yeah, easy for you to say,” Foggy told him, drinking one of Kent's roommate's beers, “but when it's your roommate who's like, an eleven out of ten _and_ has that whole wounded-vulnerable thing going on, it's a different story. All the available girls that I might have had a chance with just get sucked straight into the Murdock Charisma Vortex of Doom.”

“That's rough, man,” Kent commiserated. Kent was an alright guy.

So all in all he didn't mind too much having to crash out on a Friday. And when—not if—he got some action, he'd now be able to be sure that Matt would return the favor and leave him to rock the lucky girl's world in peace.

The most annoying part was waking up and discovering that he'd left his wallet in their room the evening before, so now he'd have to go back and risk seeing Matt and his girl in a compromising position before he could go get coffee.

Nine a.m. was a little unfairly early to bust back in after a sexile, but. Coffee.

He didn't need to have worried, though, because when he knocked on the door and called out, “Matt are you up? Is your lady friend still there? I'm not going to see you naked if I come in am I?” he got a reassuring response.

“No,” Matt called back, amused. “You're safe.”

Foggy let himself in to find no one but his roommate, who was sitting up in bed in a t-shirt and sweatpants. No nakedness, no girl in sight. “What, did you kick her out?”

Matt ran his hand through his hair and shrugged. “I took a shower after, and when I got back, she was gone.”

“Probably scared her off with your terrible sex moves,” Foggy advised, shaking his head in pity. “She didn't want to have to let you down easy, so she took off to spare you the embarrassment.”

Matt laughed at him. “Yeah, that's probably it,” Matt agreed. It was nice to see him looking relaxed and happy, Foggy could admit, something he hadn't seen much of in their roommateship so far. He was kind of an intense guy, and Foggy couldn't help worrying about him.

“It's not your fault, hot people are never that good in bed. You don't have to work as hard,” Foggy said absently, hunting around for his wallet. It had been right on his nightstand, hadn't it? He always left it there. Matt didn't even respond to his mockery, just hmmed as he went back to flipping through one of his textbooks. Studying at nine on a Saturday morning. Hopeless.

Foggy couldn't find his wallet anywhere. “Hey, you haven't seen my wallet, have you?”

“Can't say that I have,” Matt replied in that amused tone of voice which Foggy had already learned to read as _I pity the poor sighted idiots of the world, so I must be kind to them._

“You know what I mean. I always leave it on the nightstand, but it's not there, it's not on my desk. You didn't move it for any reason, did you?” Foggy picked up his jeans from two days ago, feeling in the pockets with no luck.

“No. Did you lose it somewhere?” Matt asked, frowning.

“I definitely had it yesterday,” Foggy said, remembering back, “because I hit the coffee cart on the way back here from my morning class. I _must_ have left it here.”

“Well, it's got to be around here somewhere, in that case.”

“I'm telling you, it's not.” He wasn't the neatest person ever, sure, but he was careful with the important things, always had been. And the wallet was definitely not in the room. “What if it was stolen?” Foggy asked, TV specials about the devastating effects of identity theft flashing through his mind.

“Calm down, I'm sure it's not stolen,” Matt said in what Foggy felt was a slightly condescending tone.

“You don't know that!”

“Well, check your account, then.”

“Fine.” Foggy opened his laptop and logged into his bank's website. His heart almost stopped when he saw $200 in charges to some online store made that morning. “Oh my god, it WAS stolen! But I left it right here. How did it get stolen from our room?” He leapt up and started pacing, arms flailing.

“Oh, shit,” Matt said, wincing. “Foggy...”

“That girl!” Foggy gaped at the realization. “Your booty call stole my wallet! You brought home a kleptomaniac! Who was she? What's her name?”

“Um, Carrie?” Matt said uncertainly.

“Last name?” Foggy demanded, the urge to strangle his roommate rising.

“Uh...” Matt's face scrunched up in confusion, his eyebrows drawing together.

Foggy clenched his fists to his forehead, letting out a groan of frustration. “Matt!”

“Sorry,” Matt told him with a hangdog look. “Maybe we can find her. We can go to campus security.”

“Yeah,” Foggy said, exasperated, “And you'll give them a description?”

“Um,” Matt said again unhelpfully.

“I'm calling my bank right now and if they don't reverse the fraudulent charges..” the thought of taking $200 out of his already stretched budget for the semester was painful. He took out his cell and dialed the number.

“I'll pay you back.”

“That is so not the point, Murdock. We are having a major talk about boundaries and leaving strange women with criminal tendencies alone in our room,” Foggy told him as the phone rang in his ear.

A chipper voice answered his call. “Hello, Midtown Credit Union, how can I help you?”

“Hello, ma'am, I'd like to report a case of my roommate being a freakin idiot.”


	2. The Double Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More suffering for poor Foggy :D :D

The first and last double date Foggy ever went on in his life involved two girls named Jen and Jenna, a Lower Manhattan bro-bar, enough tequila to stun a team of oxen, and his roommate showing the maturity of a ten year old on a dare.

Foggy had had high hopes for the date. He'd met Jenna in a bookstore when she'd complimented him on picking up a book of poetry by Anne Finch (he failed to mention that he didn't know what it was and only picked it up because it had a pretty teal cover and he wanted a closer look. He wound up buying it), which could not be any more meet cute, so clearly their relationship was off to a good start. Jenna was a serious girl, but with a warm smile and beautiful eyes, and she and Foggy had hit it off right away. When he'd asked her out for a drink, she'd agreed with flattering eagerness. They were supposed to meet up on Thursday, but on Wednesday she called him.

“Hey there, beautiful,” he answered. Charmingly.

“Hi, Foggy,” she replied, sounding regretful. “About tomorrow...”

“Are you canceling on me? Jenna, you can't, that's cruel and unusual, don't cancel.” Foggy might be begging, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

“I don't want to, it's just, my best friend Jen just got dumped.”

“Ah, how bad is it?”

“Dumped her for an eighteen year old who he's been cheating on her with. Publicly. On facebook.” Her voice over their shaky cell phone connection dripped with contempt for the guy in question.

“Ouch,” Foggy winced in sympathy.

“Yeah. So she kinda needs me the next few days, y'know? Best friend obligations.”

She sounded actually regretful. And, well, he couldn't fault her for wanting to support her friend. It wasn't like he wouldn't do the same thing in her shoes. Wait, that gave him an idea. “Well, she should come out with us!” he suggested.

“Aww, that's sweet of you, really. But having her third wheel on a date, probably not the best way to cheer her up.”

“Psh, who said anything about a third wheel? I'll set her up with someone.”

“I don't know...”

“Nah, trust me, it'll be great,” Foggy powered through. “Even if she's not ready to get back on the horse, she can't say no to a fun night out with a good looking, sweetheart of a guy, in the company of her best friend and her best friend's handsome date—that would be me—can she?”

“And you just happen to have a good looking, sweethearted, single guy conveniently at hand?” Jenna asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Foggy pronounced, “I do.”

“I should never have let you talk me into this,” Matt said as they walked into a busy East Village bar the following night.

“Man up, Pal.” Foggy advised, clapping him on the shoulder. “You're going to spend the night charming a cute sad girl, which is like, hardly a burden, and I'm going to have an amazing first date with Jenna.”

Of course, because the universe just worked that way, the heartbroken Jen turned out to be not just cute but insanely gorgeous.

“Foggy!” Jenna exclaimed when she spotted them, waving. Jenna, looking just as adorable as she had when extolling the virtues of feminist poetry, beckoned Foggy over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Foggy resisted the urge to put his hand up to his cheek where it tingled. “This is Jen,” she indicated the girl across the table. Jen was a stunning brunette who looked less like she'd just been dumped than just walked off a runway somewhere.

“Hi,” Foggy said, giving them a little wave. “This is my roommate, Matt. Matt, Jenna on your right, Jen on your left.”

The girl, Jen, was looking at Matt, a little stunned. Oh shit, it suddenly occurred to Foggy that he had forgotten to mention a certain feature of the guy he was setting Jenna's friend up with.

“Wow, I didn't expect--” Jen paused and Foggy winced a little, dreading whatever dumbass remark was coming. “--someone quite as gorgeous as you,” she finished. She looked Matt up and down, her bright red lips quirking in an openly hungry smile.

Matt did that terrible open-hearted head-tilted-back self-deprecating laugh that made the girls and not a few of the guys swoon. “And I didn't expect you to be quite so happy to see me. I heard you've had a rough week,” he commiserated.

Her face crumpled for a moment, then she rallied. “You know what? That asshole never deserved me anyway.”

“Let me buy you a drink and we can toast to his getting an incurable STD,” Matt offered. Foggy only rolled his eyes.

“Oh, I think I like you,” Jen said, laughing. The two of them moved off to the bar, promising to get a round for all four of them. Jen looked as happy to offer Matt her arm as he was to take it.

Foggy turned to Jenna and discretely gave her two thumbs up. She nodded, looking pleased.

“See, I told you. Look, she looks happy.”

Jenna smiled at him. “You're really something,” she told him, grabbing his hand and twining their fingers together. “Thank you for doing this.” Her smile was kind of stunning, actually.

“My pleasure. Really.” He gently squeezed her hand in his.

Thing were looking good, really good, in other words. He was getting all the go-ahead signals from Jenna, and she was just as adorable and smart as ever. She listened to his stories of his family and talked to him about her thesis in a way that actually made Thomas Hardy sound interesting.

It was looking to be one of the best first dates that Foggy had ever had. So naturally that was when everything went to shit.

The table next to them, at which sat half a dozen of the most obvious NYU business major douchebros known to man, had started up some kind of drinking contest involving shots of tequila.

After a particularly loud chorus of “DOWN THE HATCH” followed by hoots and hollers, all four of them were wincing and shaking their heads.

“Remind me not to come back to this bar on Tequila Thursdays,” Jenna said, grimacing. Foggy had to agree.

“And they're drinking seventy proof. Pussies,” Jen scoffed, shaking her head in disgust. She was several drinks in, and seemed to be feeling no pain. None of them could begrudge her right to get shit-faced after being dumped, but Foggy was getting a bit worried at how she was knocking them back. “I could totally own them.”

“Tequila fan?” Matt asked her, raising an eyebrow.

“I've been known be. You?”

Matt made an 'eh' face. “From time to time.”

“You know what? Let's do it,” Jen said, eyes lighting up.

“Do what?” Foggy asked, wary.

“Let's show those bridge-and-tunnel boys how it's done.” She smiled and tugged on Matt's arm, urging him to come with her.

“Jen, no,” Jenna urged. “Please don't.”

“What? Don't ruin our fun,” Jen was up and off her barstool, tugging Matt stumbling along behind her. She went right up to the dudes' table and loudly said, “hello, boys!”

“Oh god, I'm gonna kill her,” Jenna declared, face in her hands.

Foggy, uncertain, watched as all six of the guys at the table stared up at Jen and Matt, who was standing awkwardly half-behind Jen. “Can I help you?” the one in a red polo asked, vacant eyes scanning up and down Jen's form-fitting dress.

“Yeah, we want in on your little game. Sounds like way too much fun,” she gave them a challenging flirtatious glance that Foggy would bet usually bent men to her will. “What do you think, room for two more?”

“What you and Special Needs here?” a guy in a blue button-down asked, grinning at his own wit.

As soon as the words were out from behind the guy's over-straightened capped teeth, Foggy shook his head. “Shit,” he said softly to Jenna. “Now we're in for it.”

“Unless you're scared she can drink you under the table,” Matt said, smiling in a way that Foggy knew meant trouble. “And if I were you, I'd be pretty worried, too.”

“How do we stop them?” Foggy asked in a whisper to Jenna.

“I don't know.” She shook her head, worry creasing her brow. “She's got the usual upper-middle class white girl common sense— _none_. Last time she got like this, the night wound up with her getting her stomach pumped in the ER.”

“How about we make it interesting?” Foggy heard from the dude in the blue shirt.

“Sure,” Jen agreed. “Sixty bucks says me and my date will still be standing when you two are getting peeled off the barroom floor.” She reached into her tiny purse and slapped three twenties down on the table.

The bystander bros jeered and the red shirt guy started setting up glasses. Matt had a look on his face of combined smugness and determination, and Foggy got the feeling he would rather personally rip out and livers of every person in the bar than lose this contest.

Crap, Foggy had to at least try and stop them. He came up behind Matt and whispered in his ear, “Hey, man, this is a terrible idea. Why don't we take the girls and get out of here.”

Matt just patted him on the arm. “It's fine. Don't worry so much.”

At the same time, Jenna tugged on Jen's elbow and had a hasty conference. “Hey, Jen, this is lame, why don't we get out of here and show Matt and Foggy that late-night Thai place on eighth?”

“We can do that after, after Matt and I show these fratboys a thing or two,” she proclaimed gleefully, loud enough for blue-shirt to hear her and start scowling even deeper. She was drunker than he'd thought.

“Hey, I've got an idea,” Foggy put in, matching Jen's tone of enthusiasm, as if he just came up with a brilliant plan to help her scheme. “I think the best way for us to really clean the clocks of those snotbags would be for _me_ to do it.”

“You?” Jen asked, slightly wobbling as she turned to face Foggy.

“Yeah, listen, of course you _could_ take them down, what with their weak ass tequila and all. But what would be even _better_ is to let me do it. I've got a slight body weight advantage here,” he indicated himself, then her, “so I can put even more of a hurt on them. And then you and Jenna can stand by and ...make devastating remarks about their masculinity and personal hygiene.”

Jen pondered it over for a moment and Foggy held his breath. “Okay! I like your thinking, Friendly.”

“It's Foggy.”

“Yup,” she agreed.

“Okay,” he said, “Awesome! Jenna, maybe you should grab some water. It's thirsty work, you know, insulting frat boys. Wouldn't want to go hoarse.” Jenna nodded at him, and he couldn't decipher her expression. No time to ponder it.

Foggy swung down into the open chair, next to Matt, who'd listened to the whole preceding conversation with silent amusement. Across from them sat the two beefy young guys with popped collars who were glaring at them both with definite malice. They didn't say anything about the exchange, so Foggy just assumed they'd take as much pleasure in putting him on the floor as Jen.

“Yeah, get em! Kill 'em, Friendly,” Jen shouted from behind him. One of the bros flipped over two shot glasses and sloshed them with tequila.

“Oh, boy,” Foggy said to himself. He shot one last glare at Matt, whose fault this all was, in some way, he was sure. Then he lifted the glass, took a deep breath, and downed the shot.

*

The world came into focus slowly, and mainly in the form of a stabbing pain in his forehead and an overwhelming fullness in his bladder. Bathroom. Right.

Foggy rolled over to get up, but accidentally rolled too far and hit the floor with a thump. Ow.

“You okay there, buddy?” a heinously loud voice came from the other side of the room.

“Shut the fuck up,” was what wanted to retort but all he managed to get out was “shhhufup.” He briefly wondered if he could make it down the hall to the bathroom without standing or opening his eyes.

By the time he'd peed, brushed his teeth, and held his head under a cold tap for five solid minutes, Foggy was feeling slightly more human.

He made his way back to the room and crawled back into bed, wet hair be damned.

“I can't believe I let you get me into that,” he lamented. He was pretty sure Matt was still in the room, but checking would require lifting his head.

“Hey, we won, didn't we? I think you really impressed Jenna,” Matt told him, because Matt was an asshole. Why were they friends, again?

“If she ever talks to me again, it'll be a miracle,” Foggy groaned, hit with a sudden fuzzy memory of vomiting on the sidewalk while Jenna held his hair back. At least he hadn't gotten any on her. He was pretty sure.

This was too much to deal with. Foggy decided to simply lie there and not think about anything until the world became less horrible.

An indeterminate amount of time later, his phone beeped a text message alert. He hissed at it, but opened one eye enough to read:

_**Jenna the Cutie:** _ _Sorry abt last night :( Hope you're feeling okay. Make it up to you?_

“Thank you, baby Jesus,” he muttered, dropping the phone again and burying his face back in his pillow.

“Good news?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, I might not murder you in your sleep.”


	3. The Training Accident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less suffering, more fluff in this one (further suffering to come in later chapters!!)

From Matt's perch on a fourth floor girder just below the roof he could hear it. He tilted his head and concentrated on the noise. Someone was entering through the side door on the north end of the warehouse. A man, medium build, wearing aftershave, middle aged going by his gait and the sound of his joints. From the rustle of cheap polyester clothing, in a uniform of some kind. Then came a faint electronic crackling of a radio. _Security guard_ , Matt realized. Warehouse not quite as abandoned as he'd hoped, then.

Figuring the best strategy was to quietly slip out of the building before he was noticed, he starting making his way down to the second floor where he'd stashed his coat and things.

Matt made his way to the empty elevator shaft and leapt easily onto the cables, planning to slide silently back down the way he'd climbed up. Unfortunately, as he was making his way down, the loose chains rattled, loud enough for even the guard to hear in the otherwise silent empty space.

Matt heard footsteps coming across the ground floor then up the open air stairs. He cursed under his breath, hopping down as lightly as he could onto the floor and dashing across to the catwalk.

“Who's there?” the guard's accented voice came from a hundred yards away, at the top of the stairs.

Ignoring him and hoping the guard didn't get zealous and pull out a long-range weapon, Matt kept running, making as little noise as he could. He darted into the office and snatched up his bundle where it lay just inside the door.

“You! Stop right there,” the guard shouted, his attention focusing on Matt.

“Crap,” Matt muttered to himself. The guard was now too close for him to get away to either staircase. With no time to hesitate, he ran to the left, around the office and down the catwalk. At the end of that catwalk there was nothing but a wall of windows.

“I said stop!” The guard chased after him. No way did Matt want to mix it up with a guard who was only doing his job. But he didn't think the 'oh, I'm just a poor blind man who accidentally wandered onto the second floor of your warehouse in the middle of the night' ploy was going to work.

When he got to the end of the catwalk, he had about five seconds before the guard made it around the corner and spotted him again. The only thing in front of him were a set of large awning windows, one of which had the bottom half swung open.

“Oh, man,” he let himself lament before swinging down, sliding under the top half of the window, and rolling straight out into open air.

A sickening second of free fall and Matt hit the ground, hard, rolling with the impact as best he could. Pain shot up his leg, but he limped to his feet and headed for the fence.

He could hear from inside the building the guard talking on his radio. “Mike, you there? Just spotted someone at four-four-three. White male, probably a homeless kid or something. He ran off and damned if I can find him.”

Reaching the fence, Matt lifted up a loose section of chain link and scooted underneath it, feeling it scrape up his back even as his leg protested the treatment, sending bolts of red fire up through his ankle.

Hastily unrolling his bundle of belongings, he shrugged into his coat, scrambled his glasses onto his face and grabbed his cane. He didn't breath easy again until he was headed down the sidewalk, cane in front of him sweeping the ground.

Matt could still hear the guards confusedly consulting each other, and he let himself smile as he turned, limping only a little, back onto the main road.

It was a long walk back to the dorm, though, and once the adrenaline wore off, he started to notice how much his ankle really hurt.

By the time he— _finally_ —made it home, he was limping pretty badly. He could hear Foggy asleep and tried to be quiet as he let himself in. Foggy always claimed that one perk of living with Matt was that he would never wake him up by turning the lights on in the middle of the night. But when he went to get his first aid kit down from the closet, the noise must have been too much.

“Huh?” Foggy said, muzzily, sitting up in bed. “Whazzat? Matt?”

“Yeah, it's me, Foggy, go back to sleep,” Matt said, aiming for normal.

It must not have worked, because Foggy's next question was. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Matt fished out a roll of ace bandage and an icepack.

He heard the click of Foggy's bedside lamp and the rustling of him sitting up. “Yeah, right, nothing, why are you limping?”

Matt made his way to his bed, giving up on hiding the limp. “It's not a big deal, I just twisted my ankle a little.” He sat down on the bed with a sigh of relief at having the weight off of his bad leg. He began carefully unlacing his shoe.

“Why do you feel the need to lie to me?” Foggy asked, in his best impression of his own mother. Matt, having met Mrs. Nelson, usually would have laughed, but he wasn't finding it that amusing at the moment. Foggy got up and came over to kneel down in front of him, taking over the task of unlacing and taking off his boot.

Matt sat back on his hands and let him. When Foggy got into one of these moods, it was easier not to fight it. “It's not so bad, really,” Matt said. He was almost 100% certain nothing was broken. He winced as Foggy finally had to jerk the shoe to get it off, which hurt almost as much as the landing had in the first place.

“Shit, it's really swollen,” Foggy exclaimed, sounding worried.

“That's what the icepack's for. Gotta wrap it first, though.”

“Wrap it? Matt I'm pretty sure this is broken, a little ace bandage isn't gonna cut it.”

“Nah, it's not broken,” Matt assured him, though he didn't think Foggy was listening.

“Oh man, it's turning an ugly red color, too. What did you do to yourself?”

“Just, y'know,” Matt waved a hand in a vague gesture, hoping against hope that Foggy would drop the subject.

“I thought you were on a date. How did you break your ankle while you makin sexy times with a girl? Do we need to have a birds and the bees talk here, because seriously, bodily harm is usually not supposed to be part of it.”

“It's not broken, I told you.” Foggy just huffed and crossed his arms, waiting for an explanation. In exigence, Matt told the truth. “I had to go out a window.” He immediately cringed at how outlandish that sounded. He opened his mouth to backpedal when Foggy interrupted him.

“You _jumped_ out a _win_ dow,” Foggy repeated, slowly, as if impressing the full stupidity of each syllable on his brain. “What the fuck? What, did her boyfriend come home or something?”

“Well...” Matt let the rest sink into a convenient silence, hoping Foggy would believe his own conjecture and not press any further. Matt was never actually with as many girls as Foggy always assumed he was. A lot of the times he was out late he was working out or training. Foggy usually just figured it was a girl and Matt didn't correct him, not wanting to say 'actually I was parkouring around in an empty warehouse for fun.'

“Oh my god. You take off with a hot girl, of course, then almost get murdered by her boyfriend, of course. I swear to god I have no idea how you're still alive.” Foggy sounded more like his mother in that moment than when he'd been deliberately imitating her, but it probably wasn't politic to point that out.

“All those prayers to St. Lucy must have paid off.” Matt told him, aiming for charming.

“Okay, we're taking you to the clinic.”

“I don't need it, really, I'll be fine.”

“You do need it, don't argue with me, I'm taking you. You've clearly proven your lack of good judgement tonight, so I'm making the decisions now.”

Foggy filled the cab ride and the hour's wait at the urgent care clinic with huffy silence, interspersed with admonitions about Matt's stupidity.

“Honestly, I can't believe you.”

And, five minutes later: “You really thought jumping out the window was your best bet? What was your plan if you'd been higher up? You gonna jump from the fifth floor? No, wait, don't answer that.”

A few minutes after that: “How did you not know that she had a boyfriend?”

Matt didn't try to argue, just sat and let Foggy's reprimands float past him. It took his mind off the throbbing in his leg.

Finally he got called back, had an x-ray done, and, to Matt's total lack of surprise, the doctor pronounced it was only a bad sprain, wrapped it, and recommended ice and rest.

“I told you,” Matt couldn't resist saying on the cab ride home. He was feeling a little better with the combination of ibuprofen and the compression bandage.

“Yeah, well, forgive me for wanting to make sure my best friend wasn't gonna get gangrene and have his foot fall off.” Matt's heart skipped a beat, and he was fiercely glad that Foggy couldn't hear the way he could.

“Your best friend, huh?” Matt's voice came out a bit shy, which was embarrassing. But honestly, he'd barely had a friend, much less a best friend, since he was a kid. And now Foggy, who had a hundred friends, and whom everyone loved, wanted to claim _him_ as a best friend.

“Yes, Matt, you asshole,” Foggy told him, but with a smile now peeking through. “You're my best friend. So try not to damage yourself, okay?”

Matt smirked and elbowed him in the side, which provoked Foggy to make an outraged noise and elbow him back.

“Ech,” Foggy lamented. “I have to get up for Con Law in like, four hours. I'm gonna be a total zombie the whole day.”

“A small price to pay for ensuring the health of your best friend,” Matt told him, grinning.


	4. The Vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Foggy POV hooray (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ (Because it's somewhat relevant to this chapter: my headcanon is that Foggy is the smart one between the two of them, but Matt does better academically because he works much harder. Like, Foggy does 90% as well as Matt by studying half as much.)

Matt didn't think he deserved to have nice things, was the problem. So it was part of Foggy's job, as best friend and roommate extraordinaire, to convince him sometimes that he did.

Case in point: second year, when all Foggy wanted to do was go on a teeny, tiny vacation, and he had to knock down a whole cavalcade of bullshit self-flagellation to get Matt to agree to it.

“I dunno, Foggy, it's a waste of money,” was Matt's first objection when Foggy broached the subject.

“Yeah, but for once we actually _have_ a tiny bit of money to waste. Have you ever been on vacation? I mean a real one, with beaches and drinks with pineapple in them?”

“No,” Matt admitted.

“Me neither. One year I went to Ocean City...with my mom. And it rained the whole time. That's it. Don't you think we deserve a tiny little break after busting our asses for two straight years?”

“Well,” Matt was wavering. “But I really need to study. Finals are coming up fast, we can't fall behind.”

“Dude,” Foggy exclaimed in frustration. “I didn't say we should go for a month. It's ONE weekend! Three days! Then you can come back here, and put on your hermit pants, and study twenty hours a day like usual.”

“Hermit pants?”

“Yes! Don't deny it. If it weren't for me, you'd be a full-on scraggle-bearded sackcloth-wearing hermit. With, like, lice. And stuff.” It was a shame that his gestures were wasted on Matt, because he felt he was doing a really good job of conveying the beard/lice concept with his hands.

Matt laughed whole-heartedly at that, and Foggy knew he was eventually going to get his way.

He booked the cheapest possible rental car—as long as it had four wheels and a steering column that's all he could ask for—and a discount hotel room in Delaware two blocks from the beach.

Foggy made Matt listen to his music for the entire four hour drive, on the principle that if he had to do all the driving, he got to pick the music. “Well, if you want me to take my turn driving...” Matt offered, grinning, after Foggy explained this principle. Foggy blew a raspberry at him.

The New Jersey turnpike was never anyone's idea of a good time, but with the windows rolled down, his favorite mix playing loud over the speakers, and his best friend teasing him from the passenger's seat, Foggy felt like there was nowhere he'd rather be.

“This was _such_ a good idea of mine,” he told Matt smugly. Matt hummed an agreement, tilting his face into the warmth of the Spring sunshine coming in the window.

It continued to be a good idea as they spent Friday afternoon lounging on the beach, Friday night eating bad Mexican food and getting drunk on piña coladas, and Saturday morning having a slightly hung-over brunch while Matt flirted outrageously with their cute waitress. It was maybe even a better idea that afternoon when Matt tentatively asked if Foggy wanted to go swimming.

“You've never been swimming in the ocean?” Foggy asked incredulously as they headed for the beach.

“When I was a little kid, yeah, we went to the Rockaways in the summers. But I haven't been since,” he waved his hand to indicate his eyes. “The nuns always said it would be too disorienting.”

“Oh, yeah,” Foggy tried to imagine it, bobbing along in the ocean, but not able to see the beach or tell if a wave was coming at you. “I guess it would be. Well, don't worry, buddy, I'll stick close to you.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, warmly smiling at him.

And it had been totally fun. They splashed around, swam out pretty far, and floated on pool noodles for long, quiet minutes.

“This is nice,” Matt declared, gently bobbing along on the waves, arms resting over the back of the foam noodle as he bobbed along. He looked more relaxed than Foggy could ever remember seeing him. Foggy mentally gave himself another pat on the back for forcing Matt to agree to the idea.

In short, it was a perfect vacation, right up until Saturday night. Foggy had forgotten, and later kicked himself for forgetting, that although Matt sometimes didn't think he deserved nice things like vacations, once they were on vacation they were guaranteed to run into the one nice thing that Matt did think he deserved: girls.

After showering off the ocean salt and Foggy taking a nap—during which time he's pretty sure Matt actually did some studying while Foggy wasn't awake to protest—they decided it wasn't a real vacation unless they found a dive bar.

The nameless bar half a mile down at the end of the beach wasn't quite as much of a dive as Josie's back home, but the scanty lighting, unwashed floors, and numerous prominent health code violations were enough to make them feel right at home.

Foggy was feeling so much at home, in fact, that he missed the warning signs until he suddenly noticed that Matt, instead of returning to the table, had been spending the last five minutes leaning against the bar, chatting with two college-age blond girls who were now, as Foggy noticed them, giggling at something Matt had said, one with her hand on his arm.

“Oh, boy,” Foggy muttered to himself. “Hey, Matt,” he called out loud, letting his tone indicate _get your butt over here_. Matt must have gotten the message, because he excused himself from the two girls.

“What are you doing?” Foggy asked, as if wasn't painfully obvious the answer was 'getting into trouble.'

“Just,” Matt shrugged with faux innocence that might work on someone who didn't know him as well as Foggy did, “making friends. Sammi over there invited us to a party back at her place,” Matt reported.

“Really?” Foggy asked incredulously. Not that he had anything against bleach-blond girls with bellybutton piercings. And the one Matt had been getting cosy with in particular was crazy beautiful. But honestly, what part of that sounded like a good idea?

“Yeah. You wanna come?”

Foggy looked over at the girls, who were glancing at him with a distinct lack of interest. “Do I want to go to some random college girls' party?” Foggy asked sarcastically. Matt just raised his eyebrows at him. “No, Matt, no I don't,” Foggy pronounced.

Matt shrugged. “Okay,” he said amicably, and started to walk back toward the girls.

“Wait,” Foggy put a hand on Matt's shoulder. “You're just just taking off with them?”

“It'll be fine, she'll give me a ride back to the hotel later.”

Foggy let out a defeated sigh. He knew when it was useless to try and talk Matt out of something—which was most of the time. “Okay,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Have a good time, I guess.”

“Thanks. See you later, buddy,” and with a wave over his shoulder, he went.

Foggy, naturally, did not end his night by having two hot women suddenly appear and whisk him off to places unknown. No, he walked back to the hotel alone after a few more rounds, feeling morose and trying not to worry too much over Matt. He knew he could take care of himself, but Foggy couldn't help picturing the worst case scenario.

He drifted off uneasily, wishing Matt would get home.

Foggy jarred awake some unknown time later by his phone blaring out _White and Nerdy_. He blinked at the sun streaming in through the windows. Was it morning already?

“Hey,” Foggy managed, answering the ringing. “Matt?”

“Yeah, it's me,” Matt sounded uncharacteristically sheepish. That was the tone he usually only used when he'd fucked up real bad. Foggy instantly sat bolt upright in bed, going alert.

“Where are you, man?” Foggy glanced over at the other hotel bed, which was undisturbed. “I thought you were coming home last night?”

“Yeah, about that..”

“What, you're still at that girl's house?”

“Well, I guess it was her house. But she never came back.”

“She what.” Foggy said, flatly. Here came the fuck-up part, he could just sense it.

“Sammi and her friend left to go get cigarettes and said they'd be back to get me.”

“What? When?”

“They left around one.”

“And it's--” Foggy checked the time. “Nine thirty now.”

“Yeah.”

“Matt,” Foggy sighed. “You waited there all night alone?”

“Yeah. I finally gave up half an hour ago and walked down the road till I found a gas station.”

“Wait, why did you have to go to the gas station?”

“Didn't know the address of the house, and street signs don't really help.”

“Jesus,” Foggy dragged his free hand down his face.

“Can you come pick me up?” Matt sounded weary, but also like he was finding the situation kind of funny. Foggy, meanwhile, was torn between anger at the girls, exasperation with Matt, and a kind of wary resignation at the disaster that was his life.

“Can't you get a cab?”

“We're pretty far out from anywhere, and the clerk said it'd be like eighty bucks to get a pickup out here.”

“Ugggghhhhhhh.”

“Foggy.”

“Okay, okay, what's the address?”

Which was how Foggy found himself driving through the backwoods of Delaware--he hadn't even known there were backwoods in Delaware--in a falling apart rental car on a Sunday morning to try and pick up his severely common-sense-deficient best friend.

He was almost sure he'd turned off the highway onto the right road, but after driving down an increasingly pothole-y gravel road for twenty minutes with no sign of the intersection he was supposed to come to, Foggy pulled over to double-check. He had his scribbled directions for himself he'd worked out before he'd left the hotel. It had seemed straightforward enough.

But now, nothing was where it seemed like it should be. He tried to pull up the map on his phone, but it wouldn't load.

“Oh, come on.” He thumped his phone against the dashboard, but that didn't help. There was still a disconcertingly blank grey screen where the map should be.

Cursing to himself, he pulled back onto the road, telling himself he would stop at the next place he saw and ask for directions. Five minutes later he was pulling into the unpaved parking lot of what seemed to be a road side restaurant named _Dinah's Diner_.

The woman behind the counter, who had a giant poof of fire engine red curls and looked like she could snap him in half without breaking a sweat, turned a skeptical eye on him as he entered. The few other patrons in the place looked like extras from a horror movie that ended with Foggy getting disemboweled and roasted over a fire.

“Excuse me,” Foggy said, putting on a smile that he hoped was winning and not at all terrified. “I'm a little lost.”

The waitress snapped her gum at him menacingly, but gave him terse directions. When she asked if he wanted anything else, he stammered out a no-thank-you and fled back to his car.

Ten minutes later, following her instructions, Foggy found himself squinting at the orange barrels ahead of him in the road.

He drove right up to the roadblock. There was a sign. _Road Closed_.

“Arrg.” Foggy buried his face in his hands and spent a solid thirty seconds regretting his life choices.

After his wallow—you didn't get through two years of law school without learning to pull yourself out of a wallow—he did a U turn, and decided to just drive straight back to where he'd exited the highway in the first place.

He made sure to flip off Dinah's scary-ass restaurant on the way.

To top everything off, it was Sunday morning, and every radio station except one seemed to be playing gospel or broadcasting a sermon. The only one that wasn't was a top forty station blasting “Somebody That I Used to Know” every three songs until Foggy desperately wanted to find that Gotye prick and punch his lights out.

Finally, two more Somebody That I Used to Know's later, he reached the highway again and, pulling over a second time, heaved a sigh of relief when the GPS dot on his phone pinged back to life.

Just about the time he found the actual state road he was supposed to have turned off at, his cellphone rang, again _White and Nerdy._ He really needed to change his ringtone for Matt at some point.

“Where are you?” Matt asked, voice crackling over a not that great connection. “I thought you'd be here by now.”

Foggy grumbled. “I got lost, okay?”

“Okay,” Matt said, sounding like he was secretly amused at Foggy's expense. He sounded like that a lot, but today Foggy was _not in the mood_.

“I've got it now, I hope. Probably. I'll be there in half an hour. Are you okay?”

“Fine. I had hostess cupcakes from the gas station shop for breakfast and a trucker offered me forty dollars for sex.”

“See, if you were a better negotiator, you could have earned your cab fare by now.”

Matt laughed and hung up on him.

He was so busy paying attention to the roadsigns and focusing on his route so that he wouldn't get lost again, that at first Foggy tuned out the noise he was hearing.

After a few minutes, however, the insistent _thub-thub-thub_ penetrated even his attempts to sing along with the radio and Foggy felt his stomach sink to somewhere below his ankles.

“Oh, no. No WAY,” he shouted meaninglessly at the universe, pulling over once again to the nearest broad point in the shoulder.

The back left tire was totally, completely flat.

Foggy gave the shitty rental car a solid kick and popped the trunk.

Twenty minutes later he was dirty, sweaty, smelled like pile of animal shit he had somehow stepped in, and was on the road again.

“Matthew Michael Murdock, you son of a bitch.” Foggy had rolled down the window when he spotted him specifically so he could yell this at Matt before he even came to a complete stop. Matt was sitting, looking like hadn't a care in the world, on a dingy plastic lawn chair out front of a two-pump gas station.

Matt smiled at the sound, and waved in the approximate direction of Foggy and the car. “Hey, man. What took you so long?”

“You are on my shitlist, Murdock, so don't even try that with me. And who are those girls? I'm gonna find 'em and give them a piece of my mind.”

Matt did that tilt of his head and tiny lip curl that was his equivalent of rolling his eyes. “Don't make it such a big deal.”

“A big deal? They abandoned you in a strange place, with no means of getting home. If you knew half of what I had to go through to get here, buddy, you'd know they have a very big deal to answer for.”

“How are you more mad at them than at me?”

“I'm resigned to you. Plus, you're only careless with yourself, not with other people, unlike _them_.”

“Awww. I think that's the nicest thing you've said about me in a while.” Matt was outright grinning now, but it wasn't annoying Foggy as much as it probably should have.

“Well, it's gonna have to hold you for a while, 'cause don't think I'm not pissed at you, too.”

Matt tapped his way over to the car and made his way around to the passenger's side. “Well, if it's any consolation, I had a pretty disappointing night.”

“You know what? We are never, _ever_ going on vacation together again,” Foggy told him, putting the car in gear and speeding off back toward the hotel.


	5. The Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halo effect, in case you're wondering, means that when we have an overall good impression of someone, we're more likely to think they have other positive attributes. Among other things, it explains why we tend to judge attractive people to be more competent and trustworthy!! the_more_you_know.png

It's not that Matt was opposed to parties. No matter what Foggy said, he wasn't that much of a stick in the mud. It was just that if he went to a party, he would rather there were people there that he knew, and music that didn't overwhelm all thought processes, and preferably something to do other than drink to the limits of human tolerance.

This, it became clear before they even got in the door, was not that party.

From a block away, Matt could pick up a cacophony of noises over a mediocre but extremely loud dance music playlist. There were the periodic chorus of “woo!”s, and the sounds of what he was pretty sure was a keg stand in progress.

“Whose party is this, again?” Matt asked as they drew nearer the Upper West Side building that was thumping loudly enough that surely even Foggy could hear it from here.

“I don't know, some friend of Larry—he invited us.” When Matt didn't reply, he sighed. Foggy tended to assume that anyone _he_ knew, Matt must know. “You know Larry, you sit right behind him in Adjudication.”

“Oh yeah, the guy with the deviated septum who's always subtly bragging about his uncle the appellate court judge, right?”

“I don't know what you know about his septum, but yes. He's a good guy, though.”

“And why did he invite you to this party?”

“It's called having friends, Matt, it's totally a thing. You should try it sometime.”

“I have friends,” he protested as they walked up the stoop and Foggy rang the bell.

“You have _friend_ , singular,” Foggy told him, pointing at himself. “Me. Which is great, and all, but seriously, you need to branch out a bit. It won't kill you to be sociable for one night.”

Matt laughed at him. “I said I'd come, I didn't agree to be happy about it.” The door buzzed and they pushed their way in. The music from upstairs was almost drowning out everything else Matt could hear, and he had to concentrate hard for a moment to push it back and not let it overwhelm him. So he missed whatever comeback Foggy made.

“I even wore my nice jeans,” he replied as they ascended the narrow stairs, hoping that would do as a response to whatever Foggy had said.

“Yeah, okay, those jeans are nice. But I know you're only wearing them 'cause that girl Melissa told you they make your butt look good.”

Matt was mostly able to keep his senses under control as they entered the apartment rattling with music and pulsating with a slightly sweaty, excited throng of bodies. Matt clutched his cane close to himself and putting a hand on Foggy's shoulder, trailing behind him.

“Let's go find Larry,” Foggy said.

“What?” It was always tricky to figure out how much he should and should not be able to hear—he'd never quite mastered it and often freaked people out by overhearing things he wasn't “supposed” to. But he was pretty sure in this environment, there was no way he should be able to understand regular speech over the piercing sound waves invading every cubic inch of space. He wondered how the other party guests were managing.

“I said,” Foggy yelled at him from eight inches away, “Let's find LARRY.”

Oh, that was how. Unbelievably, Matt's eardrums hurt even worse after that.

The one silver lining to the punishing wall of sound was that, when they did find Larry and his little group of friends, at least Matt didn't have to listen to his wheezy nasal breathing. The guy should really look into getting that septum issue corrected.

The little knot of people, into which Foggy was heartily welcomed, didn't have anyone that Matt actually knew. It was too loud for much real conversation, so they were mostly just standing around drinking and occasionally shouting inane remarks at each other. Matt figured he owed it to Foggy to stay for an hour, or until the neighbors called the cops on a noise complaint, whichever came first.

Foggy decided the way to cope was for both of them to get drunk, so he started periodically leaving and returning to shove a plastic cup in Matt's hand. Matt would always knock it back with a shrug. At least the warmth of being tipsy made the overwhelming sensations of the music and crowd of bodies a little easier to bear.

After an indefinite period of time and an indefinite number of beers, Matt abruptly realized that he'd been finished with his current drink for a while and Foggy hadn't replaced it.

He focused again on his surroundings only to find that most of the group had drifted off while he was zoned out, and Foggy was now sitting on the loveseat close—very close—to one of the women he'd been chatting with earlier. Which meant Matt had been standing by himself, totally zoned out, holding an empty plastic cup for who knew how long.

Sighing, Matt moved off. He couldn't baby-duck on Foggy all night, and the guy put up with enough of Matt's romantic misadventures to warrant some consideration when he was chatting up a girl.

Winding through the crowd, Matt soon gave up on his cane, it was only annoying everyone and there were too many people, moving too quickly, for it to be useful. He set it down in a safe corner, deciding to just stick close to the walls and hope all the other partiers will be too drunk to notice or remember him moving around without it.

The keg was easy enough to locate, and Matt was able to get a refill and find a place off to one side of the dance floor to stand without anyone trying to talk to him. The “dance floor” was obviously just the living room with all the furniture shoved out of the way, and it had about a dozen people on it, mostly couples and one group of women, all bumping along more or less to the beat.

Matt finished his beer, idly observing the dancers without really bothering to pay attention. He was just thinking that he'd been here long enough to fulfill his “socializing” quota and contemplating how annoyed Foggy will be if he just quietly snuck out and sent him a text that he was going home, when a body thumped against the wall only a few feet from where he stood.

It was a girl, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms with a dramatic huff of breath. She seemed to be staring off at someone on the other side of the room, and every inch of her radiated annoyance.

“Don't like this song?” he leaned over and asked her, loud enough that he hopefully she could hear over the din.

“What?” She turned toward him abruptly. Her long hair swung over one shoulder.

“You're not dancing,” Matt explained. “I thought maybe it was because you don't like Rihanna.”

She laughed shortly. “Didn't get asked,” she explained with a sharp edge on her voice. She tilted her chin back in the direction of the dance floor. Matt thought he could tell which person she was mad at—a guy, big, and a horrible dancer. He was with another girl dancing in a way that would have made any of the nuns Matt grew up with break out their paddles and lectures on sin.

“I find it hard to believe a woman like you would let that stop you,” was all he said to the girl, smiling at her. It was true enough, she was dressed and made up with exquisite care, smelling subtly of high-end products, and she exuded that kind of confidence that usually meant a girl could get whatever she wanted from most guys.

Her shoulders relaxed a fraction and she gave another little laugh, less angry, more pleased. “Well, duh,” she said. “Of course not. It's a minor setback, at best. Just have to reformulate the plan of attack.”

They fell into an easy banter about her plans for conquest. It was the fun, light kind of flirting that Matt always liked, and she did it better than most. It was the most he'd enjoyed himself the whole evening.

Another drink later, he let himself be drawn, not too unwilling, onto the dance floor

Matt and his slightly inebriated brain were thinking this had actually been a pretty good idea. Maybe Foggy had been right. He wasn't much of a dancer, but he was coordinated enough, and anyway, with this kind of club music, finesse wasn't required.

The girl danced closer and closer until they were grinding together. And it was nice, more than nice. Matt had been glued to his books and laptop for months, and he'd forgotten when the last time he had had fun—with someone other than Foggy—was, really. The girl was athletic, firm and lithe, and she pushed into him like she wanted to meld into his pelvis, and was inclined to let her. He spared an idle thought for whether he should be embarrassed that they were making a spectacle of themselves on the dance floor. Then she turned in his arms and pressed her backside against him, leaning back into his shoulder.

 _Fuck it_ , he decided.

“Hey!” Out of nowhere, a hand was grabbing Matt and spinning him around, away from his dance partner. If Matt hadn't been a little tipsy he probably could have deflected it, but as it was he staggered for a moment before regaining his balance. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?” If Matt was tipsy, the man in front of him, invading his personal space, was definitely drunk.

“Just dancing,” Matt said, raising his voice only loud enough to be heard over the music. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, shithead, you're 'dancing' with my girlfriend, so I'd say there's a fucking problem.” The guy was big, and angry. Veins in his neck were pulsing thick with anger as he leaned in toward Matt.

Matt focused for a second on the girl he'd been dancing with. Her heartbeat was fast, but not fast enough for fear; more like excitement. She was turned toward at the other guy, not seeming to pay any attention Matt. This is what she'd had in mind all along.

“You trying to get with my girl?” the meathead snarled at him. “You disrespecting her?”

“This is the most ridiculous, cliché thing that's ever happened to me,” Matt muttered to himself.

“What did you say?” Suddenly the guy's big arm shot out to grab Matt by the collar and haul him in close. Matt carefully didn't resist, tamping down on his instinct to counter the move. He could so easily hook a foot around an ankle and throw the oaf halfway across the room..but that would draw way more attention than he wanted.

Just then someone cut the volume on the music by half. The whole dancefloor moved out of the way, making a circle around them. Apparently a fight was better entertainment. So much for not drawing attention

“Listen,” he said patiently into the sudden relative quiet of the room, even as the guy's hot breath blew straight into his face. “I didn't mean anything by it. Why don't you just let me go and we'll forget the whole thing ever happened.”

“Nice try, Mr. Sunglasses.” The guy actually reached out and plucked his glasses from his face, then threw them on the floor. He deliberately raised one foot and stepped on them.

“Jesus,” Matt exclaimed as he heard the crunch of his glasses. He'd really liked those glasses. His anger surged close to the surface and he had to tamp it down hard.

“Yeah, you're gonna be seeing Jesus in a minute.” The guy hauled his arm back in the most pathetically telegraphed punch Matt had ever witnessed in his life.

Matt had approximately one and half seconds to decide whether to teach Blast ThickNeck here a lesson or just take the punch and get the situation over with.

He hadn't gotten to the end of his one and half seconds before the scene was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Leave him alone, asshole!” Foggy pushed through the ring of people and got right up in the middle of it.

“Foggy--” was as far as Matt got before he was interrupted.

“Stay out of this,” Beef McLargeHuge said warningly, tightening his hold on Matt's collar.

“The Hell I will. You realize you're about to clock a--” _blind guy_ , Foggy didn't get to finish because the guy redirected his fist and slugged Foggy right in the face. Foggy fell back, crashing into the floor.

The next few seconds were very confused. Afterward, Foggy and Matt, and Larry, who'd been watching, had never been able to agree on quite what had happened.

Matt lurched forward shouting “Foggy!” and _somehow_ the big guy wound up on the floor, and half a second later Matt was groping his way toward Foggy, who was picking himself up and _somehow_ the other guy was writhing on the ground clutching his groin.

“That's what you get!” Foggy shouted down at the guy, as Matt tugged at his arm, urging him away. The girlfriend was kneeling next to the guy, cooing over him anxiously.

“I swear, man, you stepped right on that guy's balls!” Larry said as he came with Matt and Foggy into the apartment's kitchen to find some ice.

“That's funny,” Matt said wryly, “I didn't feel anything.”

Foggy broke out laughing.

“Seriously,” Matt went on as Larry fished some ice out of the melting bag in the sink and found a mostly-clean dish towel. “I think he just tripped over his own feet, I have no idea how he managed that.”

“Well, it was a hell of a lucky thing, then. It must have--”

“Larry,” Matt put in firmly, “would you find whoever's party this is and apologize for me? Let them know I didn't mean to start any trouble.”

“Yeah, okay, man, sure,” Larry agreed and thankfully tottered off. Matt heard the music raise back up, though not as loud as before, in the other room.

Matt got Foggy to lean against the counter and tilt his head back, then he took him gently by the chin and carefully applied the cold pack to his eye.

“You didn't have to do that, you know,” Matt told him. His chest was tight as he thought of how much worse Foggy could have been hurt. _Orbital fracture, broken nose, concussion_ , even one good punch could do a lot of damage, Matt had seen it in enough boxers.

“You're kidding me, right?” Foggy asked, opening his good eye and probably trying to glare at Matt from the 45 degree angle. Matt didn't like facing off against Foggy without his glasses on. It shouldn't make that much of a difference, but it always left him feeling naked. “That guy broke your glasses and he was about to beat the shit out of you. And you wanted me to just stand around and watch?”

“He was trying to make a point, that's all. He just would have punched me, one and done. So don't leap in next time. I can take a punch, okay?”

“No,” Foggy exclaimed. He took the ice pack away from his eye and leveled his face as if meeting Matt's eyes. He sounded pissed. “No, it's not okay. I don't know who told you that it's no big deal for people to beat on you when you can't even fight back. But as long as I'm around? Not gonna happen.”

Matt swallowed hard. He cleared his throat, at a loss for words.

Foggy coughed a little and put the ice pack back on. “At least one good thing came of it—those hideous glasses are gone.”

“They were not hideous,” Matt protested, thankfully feeling the intensity of the moment retreat.

“They so were. I'm gonna want some input on your next pair, save you from another fashion disaster.”

“Really, you expect me to take fashion advice from you?” Matt smiled.

Before Foggy could retort, someone rushed into the kitchen.

“Oh my god, Foggy!” It was the girl Foggy'd been chatting up earlier. “Larry told me you were knocked out. Are you okay?” she exclaimed breathlessly.

“Terri, you missed it, it was epic,” Foggy launched into a highly colored version of events. Matt stood by, amused, not bothering to correct him when he made it sound like he'd leapt in to basically save Matt's life.

Which was good practice, considering that Foggy spent the next six months telling the story over and over, with increasing levels of ridiculousness to everyone they knew, until Matt groaned every time Foggy started out with “Did I ever tell you about the time I saved Matt from getting murdered by a girl's jealous boyfriend?”


	6. The Time Matt Wasn't an Idiot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading this absurd fluffernutter sandwich of a fic! (Is Foggy the marshmallow or the peanut butter in this analogy? Unclear.) If you liked this and want to watch me incur the wrath of god in future, you can find me [on Tumblr](http://jeannetterankin.tumblr.com/), or go to [my author page](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JeannetteRankin) and hit subscribe.

Foggy was getting ready to rip his hair out. And it was such thick, luxurious hair. But he might accidentally sacrifice some of it if the damn registrar's help desk didn't give him some damned _help_.

“Listen,” Foggy said, aiming for reasonable. But it had been two freakin' weeks of back and forth on this, and given that basically his whole future was riding on it, he was fast running out of reasonable. “I'm _supposed_ to be in that class. I have a signed piece of paper from the professor. It just hasn't come through in the online system yet, okay?”

“I believe you, but I can't control that. The registration system is all locked down to the paperwork process.” The woman on the other end of the phone had been giving him essentially the same line for ten minutes, and had passed through aggravated into now just sounding bored.

“Right, and I respect your process.” No he didn't. “But if I'm not on the roster by _tomorrow,_ I'll miss the deadline.”

“They'll be able to correct that after the information comes through,” came the rote answer.

“It's been two weeks that I've been waiting on this, and I need to file my application to graduate, which I can't do if I'm not officially _in the class._ Please, Anjali,” sometimes repeating the help desk person's name helped, right? “This dean's office is full of hardasses; they're not going to give me any leeway. If I don't get into the system today, I'm going to be in major trouble.”

Matt, who'd walked in a minute ago and was clearly eavesdropping, piped up, “You're talking to Anjali? I know her.”

Foggy covered the phone receiver with one hand and said, “Of course you know her.”

Anjali the unhelpful help desk agent, meanwhile, repeated, “Mr. Nelson, you'll just have to wait for the paperwork, I'm sorry.”

“Give me the phone,” Matt said, gesturing imperiously.

“What?” Foggy asked.

“Give it here,” Matt said. Foggy, figuring nothing could make the situation worse at this point, handed it over. “Anjali, is that you? Hi, it's Matt.” He laughed. “Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, he's my roommate. Uh-huh.”

“You're flirting. I can't believe you interrupted me to flirt with the help desk. No wait, I can, I totally can, because she's probably super hot. Fuck my life.” Matt flapped his hand in Foggy's general direction, which he figured meant 'shut up.'

“He kind of is,” Matt said, agreeing to something. “I know, you always do.” Foggy couldn't tell what she was saying, but Matt laughed again.

“Un _believable_ ,” Foggy whispered. “I'm in danger of not graduating, of having to drop out in my last semester, move home, and become a butcher. A butcher with law school debt. And my best friend is taking this opportunity to pick up girls at my expense.”

“Oh, man, that would be great,” Matt said blithely into the phone. “Here, hang on, I'm going to put you on speaker.” He held the phone out back in Foggy's direction. “Put this on speaker.” Foggy sighed elaborately, but did it.

“Anjali, you there?” Matt asked as Foggy set the phone down on his desk.

“Yeah, I hear you,” came her tinny voice from the phone. “Okay, listen, I'm not supposed to do this, but I _do_ have a way.”

“You do?” Foggy yelped.

“Yeah, I can use my supervisor's credentials to go in and add you manually on a temporary over-ride. But don't tell anyone I did this, okay?”

“Oh my god,” Foggy burst out. “That would be amazing. I won't tell anyone, I promise, cross my heart.” He drew his finger over his heart in an x, even though neither one of them could see it.

Anjali sternly told him, “I'm serious, I could get in real trouble. And it's only temporary, you'll have seven days to work it out with the registrar or you'll be auto-dropped.”

“No, no, that's amazing. Holy shit!” Foggy pumped his fist in the air. He was going to get into the class! He was going to graduate!

“You're wonderful,” Matt said, appreciatively. “You really saved his bacon, Anjali. I owe you one.”

“Hmm,” she agreed with a warm undertone in her voice. “I'll be sure to collect on that. Okay,” she said, addressing Foggy in a business-like tone again, “You're in on a temp. You'll see it in the system in about twenty minutes.” Without even giving Foggy a chance to thank her, she hung up on them.

Foggy stood there, gaping. Had that really happened? “Matt, that was...amazing. Fantastic. You're the best friend ever.” In a fit of enthusiasm, Foggy leaned in and placed a big kiss on Matt's cheek.

“Um,” Matt said, blushing and pressing his lips together. Foggy tried hard to respect Matt's many boundaries, but sometimes he got carried away, which apparently was what had just happened.

“Oh, not so much with the kissing?” Foggy asked, still too high on victory to be embarrassed. This was simple. The limits on their friendly body language were negotiable; Foggy had many avenues to expressing his affection if kissing were off-limits.

“Maybe not,” Matt said, smiling a tiny bit.

“Okay. How about declarations of undying friendship and, like, a manly fist bump?”

Matt laughed and held up his fist.

“Love you, man,” Foggy said, and gently bumped it.


End file.
